A/N: written for the prompt "salt" for ga_lfas on livejournal. The title is taken from the song of the same name by Imogen Heap.
Meredith sighs, clicking off her cell, pulling down a jacket from the row of pegs by the door.
She's the only one home and there's a kind of solace in sitting alone with her mourning, feeling what she feels. It hurts, but she's coping and there's a kind of solace in that too.
The interruption dislocates her; nudges her with a little resentment. Still, she opens the front door and gets into the car because, whether she likes it or not, she's the ballast, courtesy of her familiarity with the darker side of things, and what she can't do for George anymore, she figures she can offer to Lexie.
Joe indicates a table and Meredith's eyes follow, then move back to his face, seeking support.
"I'm sorry," he says, focusing on the real substance instead of the barroom semi-emergency it brought about. "George was . . . he was one of the good ones."
"He was," she agrees. "He really was." There's a lump in her throat and she swallows, containing it, before pointing towards Lexie. "How far gone is she?"
But no answer is really needed: there's a bottle of tequila and Lexie is leaning over the table, head on one side, apparently writing with her finger.
Meredith closes her eyes, inhales briskly through her nose and, with a last look at Joe, walks over to the woman she just recently started calling sister and takes a seat next to her.
Lexie looks up, just barely, exposing red-rimmed eyes. "I'm fine," she says. "I'm really . . . Joe didn't need to . . . " Her focus returns to the table. In front of her is an uneven spread of salt (the contents of a saltshaker that sits lidless and empty to her right) with a 0 etched into it.
"How are you doing?" Meredith asks, although she mostly means what. And it's this question she almost gets an answer to as Lexie wordlessly finishes tracing in the salt.
007
Then she scrubs it out with her hand. "I told him we probably weren't friends," she says. "That's the last time we really talked." Her finger digs into the salt again and makes a G. "That was our last real conversation."
Meredith wonders if she should say something reassuring. But all there is to say are words. She hurt George too; she let the connection slip away, almost without noticing until loss threw it in her face. But you just have to accept the choices you made once death takes away the chance to take them back. Accept, wait it out, make peace with yourself and try to do better next time - try to do better now.
She puts her own finger in the salt and adds an e to the emerging name. When she's done she says, "We need an o."
"We need a George," Lexie whispers. But her finger writes anyway.
They take turns writing the letters until George's name is complete.